the licensor cometh
as expected, she carried a clip board, and when she squeezed out a smile as we shook hands i thought i heard a hissing sound issuing forth. we'd sent all of our paperwork in advance. it was beautiful. it was spotless. it was on nice paper. a whole three-ring binder full of every crazy thing they asked for. her email response to my many months of hard work was, "i received your paperwork. there are a few minor issues, which we will discuss on monday." they were, indeed, the minor-est of issues. first, we had too much good stuff in our first aid kit. who knew! neosporin be damned! we emptied the first aid kit on the spot. removed all the offending/offensive products immediately. the other issue? according to the literature they provided if we lost heat and our building temperature fell below 60 degrees we would have to send the kids home. unbeknownst to us someone changed that rule between the time we got our instructions and the time we submitted our paperwork. it's now 65 degrees. whoop-di-fricken-hoo.
then she did a walkaround. that plant is poisonous. really? poisonous? we removed the plant. these shelves have to be bolted to the wall/floor/another shelf. rugs have to be velcroed to the lovely wooden floors. the cubbies, which were velcroed to the wall had to be bolted to the wall. some low branches on that tree have to be pruned. there's a broken shingle on the bottom left corner of the house. paint an orange line in the back so the children know not to go beyond a certain point even though your entire back yard is fenced and no one could possibly get out unless they were the size of rodent. oh, and while you're at it, tie some ribbons to the fence so the children don't run into it. oh, and by the way, since there's a wall here, even though you can see both rooms from the kitchen (which is part of the classroom), you have to have two certified teachers here at all times. i'm limiting your enrollment to the front room and kitchen only. let me go back to my office and calculate the square footage. i'll let you know how many children you can have after i do the calculation.
hunh? we can't use half the space because of one tiny wall? even though our assistant is *in* the certification course and every year until this particular year that was okay? even though i'm the mother of two children and just wrote a book on childhood nutrition? well. la dee.
and of course there were things missing from the employee files because we were so busy getting the classrooms and grounds ready for the children that we forgot about ourselves.
i'm not adequately conveying how difficult all of this was to hear after everything we'd done to be ready for that moment. the two nights before her arrival we were at the school until 2:30am working ourselves to death trying to get everything finished and set up. it was a long, hard summer. friends were lost (new friends were made, but friends were lost) because the old school had broken into tiny bits and people were hurt over its demise. (backstory is that the director was an idiot who didn't follow the state's rules and failed to pay teachers in any predictable way. people got angry. we started our own school). this particular licensor had been sent just to kick our asses--a point made abundantly clear when she told us we'd have our original licensor back as soon as she saw fit to issue our license. she held the fate of our school in her hands. her calculator would spit out a number and that would be that. we had no idea how many she would consent to allow us. in the end the number wasn't bad--fourteen in all. and we just had fourteen enrolled. three families have since been placed our our waiting list. not a bad position to be in, really, but we had hoped to start with twenty. and of course the foolishness of it all is that we can't use the back room--which holds both bathrooms, so although we aren't permitted to teach anyone anything in there we can escort them to the bathroom and back. it's not easy keeping fourteen 4-6 year olds out of there, but we're doing it. and we're using the wraparound porch while the weather is still nice.
as she was leaving that day i couldn't even muster the energy to escort her to the door. i sat there focusing on blinking back the tears that would spew forth the moment the door closed behind her.
it seems silly right now because at the 11th hour (4:30pm the day before we were scheduled to open) we did receive our license. and we have our old (much nicer) licensor back again, but we put every ounce of ourselves into those weeks--even months--leading up to that one day, and she didn't care. and she doesn't really care about the children either, because if she did we'd be using that second room. it's tight in there right now, but the kids don't seem to mind. they love their new school. especially the boy, who, one recent afternoon, proclaimed that he loves his new school as much as he loves me. i'm guessing that's a lot?
next week we will get our goats and rabbits. and soon we'll head up to boston to pick up a donated child life superchief play set. yes, i said donated. we've got some money in the bank thanks to some very generous supporters. our current donations total somewhere in the neighborhood of $60k, which is unbelievable. of course more than half of that has gone to pay for the build out, but still, a community of people came together in an amazing way to help us open this tiny little school, and every time i think about it i get goosebumps.
the licensor? she can kiss my goosebumpeley ass because, life. is. good.
the end.
(or, depending on how you look at things, the beginning!)
